


To Love That Well

by SylvanWitch



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Apocafic, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 18:49:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>That time of year thou may'st in me behold...</i> .  The brothers, the seasons, the world itself are held captive to winter's killing frost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Love That Well

It’s a little place, alone except for the mountain that shoulders the cabin’s weight and makes room for it among the trembling yellow trees.  
   
There’s a porch with bentwood railings and three wooden steps worn glossy in the middle with age and use.  
   
The front door squeaks when it opens, and the screen door out back bangs when it closes.  
   
This time of year, the whole world smells of rotting leaves, a loamy, hopeful scent that nevertheless makes him shiver.  Winter’s coming, and his old bones are colder than they once were, his muscles anxious against the air that blows through the bare boughs overhead and showers down a constant curtain of white when that season settles in.  
   
Still, Dean loves this time of year, wouldn’t change it for anything, not a condo on the beach in Cali, assuming the West Coast was still there.  Not some posh place on the Outer Banks where the big waves bang in and keep time to the earth’s slow rotation.  
   
Nope, he’s happy right where he is.  
   
Sam slopes up the road, loose-kneed and eating ground, his silvered hair catching and reflecting the weak light of the late October sun.  He’s carrying a brace of rabbits over his left shoulder, and in his right hand he’s got the .22 rifle, the one he’s so good with.  
   
Dean meets him at the porch steps, notices right away that behind his brother’s smile there’s worry.  
   
“What is it?”  
   
Sam shakes his head around a sigh and steps past Dean to the worktable bracketed between the far porch posts.  With quick, efficient strokes, he skins the rabbits and says eventually, “Old man Mason’s got his flag up.”  
   
“Shit, already?  It gets earlier every year.”  
   
Sam nods, deftly flipping offal into the undergrowth out past the pump with the flat of his blade.  
   
“Says we should hear ‘em in a day or two.  Maybe even tonight.”  
   
The crows harbinger winter’s killing cold—not snow, nor sleet, nor dark of night, but the armies of restless undead that rise up from somewhere and walk the earth, like some ancient fairy tale brought to terrible half-life, freezing anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in their icy breath and never settling until spring’s first green fingers make inroads on the last of the winter’s fringe of snow.  
   
“We’re ready,” Dean says then, but there’s some question in it, and though Sam, predictably, nods in answer, there’s some uncertainty in his eyes, too, as he turns them at last away from his work.  
   
“You have a good day?”  
   
“Not bad,” Dean defers, eyes sliding to the pump handle, gleaming like the paint’s still wet in the last brilliant beams of the setting sun.   
   
“The pain bad?”  
   
Dean shakes his head and this time does look his brother in the face.  “No.”  
   
This nod says, _That’s something, anyway_.   
   
“Wonder what it means.”  He’s talking about the crows, which every year seem to tear away autumn’s peace a little earlier.  
   
They ignore how Dean has shifted the focus from his arthritis-bent hands and his bad knee, busted up and healed wrong on their last actual job before it all went to hell, literally.  
   
“I don’t know,” Sam answers, sounding wistful.  Dean knows they’re both wishing they could call Bobby.  
   
‘Course, even if Bobby’d lived, he’d be ninety-two by now.  
   
Doesn’t change the wishing.  
   
“Let’s have some dinner,” Dean suggests then, taking the conies from the table and heading inside.  From the sink where he’s cleaning potatoes for the stew, he can see his brother’s shadow stretched out along the ground.  It makes him shiver, the way its attenuated length mimics a future neither of them ever talks about, and his hand slips, pulling a hiss from his lips as blood drips onto the clean white slices.  
   
He’s bandaging it when Sam comes inside.  
  
“What happened?”  
   
“Nothing.  Just slipped peeling the potatoes.”  
   
“Should’ve let me.”  
   
Dean shrugs and resumes the work, but he moves aside without a word when Sam hips him gently toward the cutting board, where carrots wait to be cut, and takes over potato duty himself.  
   
The meal is eaten in silence, broken only by the distant raucous warnings of carrion crows.  They share a long look when the first bird wings overhead, sounding close enough that it could be climbing down their chimney.  
   
Without a word, they rise, abandoning the last of the stew to walk opposite sides of the house, checking the wards.  
   
“We good?” Sam asks unnecessarily.   
   
Dean smirks, taking him wrong.  “Better than good, Sammy.”  
   
Sam snorts.  “You think you’re up for it, old man?”  
   
Dean answers with a firm hand, fingers bent and joints swollen but intention nevertheless entirely clear.   
   
At the weight of Dean’s hand on the bare skin of his neck, Sam shivers and closes his eyes.  
In the early days, they’d make love on the floor in front of the fireplace, on the kitchen table, or outside on the porch, Sam bent over the railing, Dean snug in behind him, hands bruising his hips, and the slap-slap-slap of their rhythm echoing from the mountain.  
   
Now, it’s a slow, deliberate stroll to the bedroom, Sam helping Dean out of his shirt because the buttons are hard for him, Dean divesting Sam of his belt with a rough, jerking pull that teases a growl out of Sam.  
   
When they’re both naked, Sam lays Dean down and spends a lot of time getting them both comfortable, dragging his lips up the inside of Dean’s bent knee, taking special care to nip at the mounded scar tissue there, biting hard enough so that Dean can feel the pressure, know that Sam loves this old, ugly thing as much as any other part of him.  
   
They ignore each other’s rising need as long as they both can stand it—or up.  At this age, it doesn’t take long, and they want it to last while it can.  
   
But when Dean breathes, “Sammy,” and reaches up toward his brother, Sam slides right home, easing down onto Dean’s cock, feeling it in his knees as he settles himself against his heels, his brother sheathed inside him like he has been a thousand times before, like he’ll be again and again and again if Sam has anything to say about it.  
   
He stays still as stone, waiting until he can feel Dean’s cock jerking impatiently inside him, and then drags himself up, ignoring the ache low in his back in favor of the sounds Dean is making, obscene and wild, words that never fail to take Sam apart, to make him speed up, Dean’s hips making short, sharp upward thrusts, the bed creaking, flesh slapping, Sam feeling Dean in the deepest part of him until he breaks open, mouth wide, throat hoarse with shouting, and Dean comes hot and hard, panting out Sam’s name like this might kill him, kill them both, and they’ll be happy for it.  
   
After, as their bodies cool and the chill air of the bedroom makes them burrow close beneath the covers, Sam says, “We’re ready,” and means it, and Dean nods his agreement, the stubble of his chin making a faint rasping sound against Sam’s chest.  Under that, Dean can hear Sam’s heartbeat, the same beat he hears in his own ears, steady and sure.  
   
Another winter is coming on hard, but vicious spirits and memories of the dead, ice on the buckets and frost on the panes, a cold steel sky and a hundred thousand crows can’t do a thing against them, held here in the heat of their two beating hearts, fire of love enough against anything the world above or the world below can send.  
   
Ready forever, this way.

**Author's Note:**

> The title and first line of the summary are taken from Shakespeare's _Sonnet 73_.


End file.
